Profile

Background It belongs to the Indo-European family, Indic group and is spoken by over 40 million people, and is spoken principally in the state of Gujarat, westernmost India, bordering on Pakistan and the Arabian Sea. Like the other languages of the northern two-thirds of India, it is descended from Sanskrit. Gujarati is written in an alphabet similar to that used by Sanskrit and Hindi (Devanagari) but without the continuous horizontal line running along the top. Zoroastrians in India use Gujarati as their religious language. Gujarati is also the language of a large part of the Indian immigrant community in East Africa, Britain and the Americas, as well as of the Muslim Ismaili community (where the Arabic script is mainly used), with words derived from Persian and Arabic. Lastly, it is the language of Mahatma Gandhi and of Mohammed Ali Jinnah the founder of Pakistan.